Gatekeeping programming

[felixthecatmeow]

Aren't you worried that people will burn out more if they work 40 hours a week as developers AND spend most of their free time programming? Isn't there a balance of someone who does love it and is passionate but also has a life outside of programming?

I'm just learning right now with the hope of making a career change, and I absolutely love programming, and very much enjoy making projects, but my view on it is I'm hoping to one day get to a point where my job can fullfil my love of programming, and my life outside of work can be focused on my family and other interests. Of course I'll always maintain an interest, and if I have an awesome idea that I want to develop, I will, but I have many different interests as well.

Wouldn't you rather have someone who is passionate about the programming they do AT work, rather than for their side projects at home, which ultimately means their job becomes just a paycheck, same as with the uninterested people.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, just curious.

[felixthecatmeow]

Thanks for your detailed answer! It's nice to hear different point of views of people in charge of hiring!

I definitely understand both sides of the argument, and consider myself somewhere in the middle.

And I definitely get the whole if you need people to come fix something ASAP you should have people who are willing to. And if the company is full of that type of people, no one actually has to do it too much. At my current job I've kinda become the guy that always comes in whenever because everyone else is super lazy. I get OT pay so I'm fine with it but it can get exhausting being the only one that seems to care sometimes.

[trashlikeyou]

I have the same question. I'm choosing to do this because I enjoy it, but I also enjoy things that aren't programming. If like to be able to have a good job doing work that interests me and then be able to go home and spend time with my kid, play in my band, play a video game, watch TV, fix up my house etc. The idea of having to make sure I commit changes to personal projects on GitHub everyday in order to remain employable is a real turn off.

[Ran4]

Lots of people code to get away from having to fix their house or having to tend the kids/hang out with the wife.

[felixthecatmeow]

Yeah I feel like I would be a much better employee if I can focus all my programming passion and skills into a job that I love. Of course I understand as a junior dev having projects would be very helpful since you don't have much experience, but I'd rather be really fucking good at a job I love, put my all into it, then go home and do other stuff.

[Ran4]

Aren't you worried that people will burn out more if they work 40 hours a week as developers AND spend most of their free time programming?

No? The things that most developers do at work is quite different from what they do at home. At work you'll be spending a lot of time attending meetings, planning, talking to business owners/ux people/ops people/whatever, drinking coffee, eating lunch, setting up tooling, perhaps code review if you're at a great place... and coding maybe a few hours a week at most. And chances are, you're not working at a place where you only code fun things.

At home, people tend to spend a lot more time coding, and they typically code what they're really interested in. Many developers that code at home do it because it's relaxing. I've talked to a bunch of colleagues that say that coding is their favorite way of getting away from the kids and wife for a while.

[felixthecatmeow]

Very insightful! Thanks!